Letter: Service Learning at Bernotas Middle School

Our sixth-grade team of students at Bernotas (Wildcats) have a community outreach goal this year to help the Crystal Lake Food Pantry.

We refer to it as our service learning project, and we wanted to share with the community the effect that it has had on our students.

On Halloween, we took our students out into the neighborhood directly surrounding our middle school to pass out bags that we had decorated, with a message on the bag asking them to help us collect food for our service learning project for the food pantry. We are trying to help our students learn how important it is to be involved, to give back and most importantly, to serve the community in which we live.

We later went out again into the neighborhood to pick up whatever donations people left for us. Our students showed such enthusiasm and gratefulness, and they were so excited that it was a pleasure to witness. We left thank you cards they had made to whomever donated food. We all felt incredible as we returned to school, witnessing what everyone had generously donated.

We, as teachers, felt so proud of our students and our community for their benevolence. Thank you so much to the surrounding neighborhoods of Richard Bernotas Middle School for showing our students what a great community they live in.